If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Jetway NC92 Atom IPC Motherboard

12-17-2008, 05:00 PM

Phoronix: Jetway NC92 Atom IPC Motherboard

If you have wanted to get your hands on an Intel Atom system but aren't interested in the netbooks that are out there, it's now relatively easy to find compatible motherboards out there to build your own Intel Atom system. Some of these motherboards even come with an Atom CPU already installed. In this article we have our hands on the Jetway NC92-230-LF, which is a mini ITX motherboard that is pre-installed with an Intel Atom N230 and offers one PCI slot, one DDR2 slot, Gigabit Ethernet, and 6-channel audio.

These things can be 'always on' and use a fraction of the electricity that a normal home 'old desktop turned server' system that is typically used by computer-savvy folks. Just get a cheap mini-itx 'minitower' box, through in a couple 1.5TB drives in mirror mode and you have yourself a very nice system for very cheap.

And for people living in apartments or are especially noise sensitive then these things would be dead quite.

A 1.6ghz or so Atom machine would be comparible to about a 800-1Ghz Celeron-m system. Atom uses a simplified core to reduce costs, size, and increase energy efficiency so it lacks much of the optimized peices that you get from a P4 or P-M style processor.

In terms of graphics and that these sort of boards don't use a Atom-optmized chipset.. they just use regular desktop/laptop parts. Intel 945G, typically. Normally well supported by Linux, but not a performance or especially energy frugal part.

Comment

the fan is only used for the northbridge anyways. The CPU has the small fanless heatsink. So don't stuff them into a insulated airless shoebox and you'll probably be fine. I haven't looked at the heatsink up close, but I expect it's one of those nasty thermal pads and it would be easy to replace the thing with a thermal-epoxy'd-on old P4 heatsink or whatever and leave it fanless.

(That should indicate the relative power usage of the desktop bits vs the actual embedded processor.)

By the way the Intel D945GCLF2 board is slightly cheaper then the Jetway and comes with a _dual_core_ 1.6ghz processor. That's for less then a hundred. For around 70bucks you can get the original single core version.

Comment

A 1.6ghz or so Atom machine would be comparible to about a 800-1Ghz Celeron-m system. Atom uses a simplified core to reduce costs, size, and increase energy efficiency so it lacks much of the optimized peices that you get from a P4 or P-M style processor.

In terms of graphics and that these sort of boards don't use a Atom-optmized chipset.. they just use regular desktop/laptop parts. Intel 945G, typically. Normally well supported by Linux, but not a performance or especially energy frugal part.

Considering I could run most of the games in the -games benchmarks (the free ones at least) on a P-II 300Mhz and a graphic card that was more than 10 years old, and still have more fun than a lot of recent commercial games, I'd still be interested to see some benchmarks. They would give us a good idea of what to expect on netbooks, and make for good comparison when the ones with 9400M+Atom ship, which should be soon.

Comment

Which just goes to show that the Atom platform really truly is hamstrung by its dependence on the old 945 chipset. Intel's new low-power Atom-friendly chipset should be out sometime next year, and then this platform as a whole will truly shine.

Comment

Which just goes to show that the Atom platform really truly is hamstrung by its dependence on the old 945 chipset. Intel's new low-power Atom-friendly chipset should be out sometime next year, and then this platform as a whole will truly shine.

For some applications, definately. Although I am more excited about ARM stuff like the Cortex-A8 and things like BeagleBoard or the Pandora handheld gaming machine.

If the Intel X drivers had much better video acceleration support then it would greatly expand the usefulness of these things with th 945g board.